I am on Series 2. I love it, I did buy the Steel with milano band. I use it for time, timers, tactic notifications and unlocking. That is all I need and I love it.
Never used or even turned on ‘fitness’, ‘health’ or anything else on it and don’t intend to and don’t need to.
There was a time when that would have been desirable. But I’m retired so I normally don’t care what time it is. As long as Due isn’t bugging me about something and there aren’t any Calendar event reminders popping up, I’m good. 
I set my Watch 6 to “Always On” a few months ago. Eliminating the slight but noticeable friction of the screen coming on is a good thing. To offset this at night, I have the Do Not Disturb evening-to-morning setting active.
I also think that for anyone who ever has to open a watch app, going from a series 1 to a 7 or an SE will be quite a nice experience. I would also look at a used 5 or 6 before an SE to get always-on; I think it makes the whole smartwatch experience more grateful and doesn’t make one overly attentive to the time.
I suppose we’re waiting a month or two before any purchase decisions need to be finalized, though…
How barbaric…
I got the series 4 literally a couple weeks before the series 5 was released (yes, silly me). Even so my series 4 still works well and does everything I need. Hard to justify the expense. However, I cannot talk myself out of a new iPhone for some reason.
My Watch 6 (“bought” with airline frequent flyer points as we can’t fly anywhere down here) already has an “always on” display. It dims a bit when I’m not actively looking at it.
I’ve a Watch 5 - 44mm - and my wife has my old Watch 3 - 42mm.
She started using the Watch 3 and wears it every day.
One of two things is likely: I get a Watch 7 45mm and she gets my Watch 5. The other - preferable - is she gets her own Watch 7 and I do, too.
2 years seems a reasonable roll over. Apple must expect something like that.
Don’t be too generous☺️.
Sorry, but Gruber has zero experience in that field. All he can do is base vague assumptions on what he has heard in other press reports over the years.
Yes, a design freeze usually happens much earlier. Yes, tooling, production lines, quality control, as well as the whole supply chain and worldwide logistics, marketing, and much more have to be set up in time and orchestrated. All that usually happens with what (industry) outsiders would consider a crazy amount of headroom. (I haven’t worked much in consumer electronics. Small tangent. But I have work in design in other industrial fields that often also use a yearly release cycle.)
Yet, what Gruber misses is that a company the size of Apple that goes into full-on panic and damage control mode, can (easily in Apple’s case) and will move mountains to not ruin their reputation (again) this year. Whether that was a success is up to judgment.
Yet, you should never look for reason in a company’s actions in that case.
I’ve first-hand seen companies (yes, plural) set up all the above for products of much higher production and assembly complexity than a Watch in 6-8 weeks if panic comes into play.
As an example: One first-tier supplier accepted high contract penalties from several customers caused by late deliveries just to fulfill that one key customer’s order. All while making a significant short-term loss on all of the portfolio projects just for that shimmer of hope to remain a supplier of that one key customer in the future. Panic? Yes. Rational? No.
What Gruber also doesn’t understand is that a company of the size of Apple doesn’t design “just one Watch”. There are hundreds of prototypes made digitally and physically and often in parallel. They did not start from zero a few weeks ago. It’s the job of their systems engineers to freeze designs of parts or partial assemblies to allow for interoperability even if the final packaging and casing are not fully set.
It is entirely plausible to re-use a previously overthrown design “from the drawer” as a fall-back.
This is why I am also not at all surprised we’ve seen such a sophisticated rumor about the iPhone 14 already. You don’t want to know how many years in advance the work on one product in other industries starts.
The explanation that the new larger flat screen unit was reused and just put under a thicker “front crystal”, as Apple calls it, and to reuse the new charging unit just cramped in the non-flat casing variant together with the old S6-based board simply makes sense.
Teams work on those parts independently and the S6 base is most likely used for prototyping anyways. The S6 can push those few more pixels around with ease. The S-chips are also quite adaptable and modular already. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be reused to drive the HomePod Mini.
Maybe, due to an internally shrunken charging/sensor unit and the slightly taller and wider case they were able to fit in a few more mAh of battery capacity to compensate for the larger screen and higher brightness to meet their minimum usage duration criterium of 18h.
Manufacturing-wise this entirely checks out.
I am more than curious to see the iFixit teardown of the series 7 this year. 
I’m sure there will be oddities and some dead give-aways.
Not sure why it matters at all what Apple did before releasing Watch 7. It is what it is. Like it and buy it, or don’t and don’t.
To pick up in one thing you said…
… It is indeed very common for companies to work on several generations at once - particularly if the product is complex. (We do this with the big computers we make, for instance.)
You could imagine Apple asks questions like “what can we do with 7nm? 5nm? 4nm? 2nm?” and designs generations according to what those would afford.
(For us, we announced Telum at 7nm - which looks very different from z15 at 14nm because it can now.)
I am still using the Series 3 as my “night watch”. Switched into theatre mode with red digits only watch face as silent vibrating alarm and sleep tracker.
I didn’t like sleeping with a metal watch band on my stainless steel watch, but you don’t notice the sports band on an aluminium watch at all. I also use it when I go swimming as the metal band is hard to dry and don’t want to switch bands all the time.
The Series 3 has only stock and health apps installed and all reminders switched off. Updates are normal and for its use I do not notice it to be slow.
“Night watch” is a good idea. Eliminates need to remember to charge. One watch on wrist, other on charger at all times.
Another reason for me to upgrade! Curse you, MPU forum!
That’s exactly what I do. Series 5 during the day, Series 4 at night.
Exactly what I plan to do: buy a Series 7 as my Day watch; keep the Series 3 as my Night watch…
I sold my 6 to have the funds for the 7. But I also found I was switching to use the Garmin Fenix 6 Pro for everything and the AW 6 was gathering dust. Guess I’ll use the funds for something else (golf clubs for my daughter perhaps! 
) Garmin does most if not all the AW does from a health/fitness sense.
Maybe AW8 with better battery, even better durability might in my future! 
Another barbarian here then!
Still happy with my 5. Will probably wait for 8 or 9.
Still on the Stainless steel S4. I was tempted by the 7 but I think I will resist one more year!